Headlines (Campus Updates)

The Laurier Writing Centre and the Centre for Teaching Innovation and
Excellence are hosting an event on how to design assignments to improve
the way students write with quantitative and scientific data. John Bean, a renowned writing scholar and author, will deliver a keynote address and interactive workshop on this topic on April 29.

Bean is a professor of English at Seattle University and the author of Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom
(Jossey-Bass, 2011). He has been researching and writing on the
development of institutional strategies that promote faculty
conversations about teaching, learning and curriculum design since 2003.

ďWhen
students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and
genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong
usefulness in any communicative context,Ē Bean writes in Engaging Ideas.

In
his keynote address, Bean will discuss using problem-based writing
assignments to teach students disciplinary concepts and ways of
thinking, especially about scientific and mathematical data. After the
keynote, there will an opportunity to meet and speak with Bean.

Beanís keynote session is open to all and is free. Visit the Laurier online registration portal to register. Guests external to the Laurier community can contact Siobhan Bhagwat at sbhagwat@wlu.ca to register.

In
Beanís interactive workshop, participants will learn how to incorporate
into their own courses assignment alternatives to the term paper that
help students develop skills in critical reading, analysis and
argumentation.

The three-hour workshop is $50 and is open to Laurier faculty, instructional staff, post-doctoral fellows and doctoral students. Participants will receive a copy of Beanís book. There are limited spots available for the workshop. Visit the Laurier online registration portal
to register (please note, the keynote and workshop are listed under the
Centre for Teaching Innovation and Excellence section of the website).
The deadline to register is April 25.

Beanís visit is
being organized in conjunction with the University of Waterloo and the
University of Toronto. For further information, visit the event page.